He lived eighty-three miles from Fairbanks
In a log cabin alongside a nameless creek
It was his tenth year living in the place
To survive out here you couldn’t be weak
He made his meager living trapping fur
His line stretched for over a hundred miles
Up at daybreak, stoke the fire, and leave
Was his daily routine, done Alaskan style
His snowmobile had long ago broken down
Now he relied on his dogs and rickety sled
A hardship he had no way to overcome
As he bundled up, toboggan on his head
Today was no different from any other
As he walked out that lonely cabin door
He had forty-four miles of line to check
Overnight at a line cabin as done before
The sky was overcast, gray, foreboding
In the air, he thought he could smell snow
It made no difference no matter what it did
He had fur to harvest, he had to go
The first set held a frozen stiff marten
The next one had been sprung by a lynx
The next one was also sprung and empty
He began to wonder if he was jinxed
It started slowly, a flake here and there
The wind picked up, the temperature dropped
He pulled his parka tight around his face
Miles ahead was the cabin, his last stop
The wind pushed snow slashed his face
It was so bad he could just barely see
Old Joe, his lead dog on his dogsled
Plodded on, knew where he was supposed to be
With a sigh of relief, he saw the cabin
Pulled to a stop, shoveled snow from the door
Got a fire going, then unhitched the team
The brutal wind ravaged his body’s core
The thermometer over his bed was broke
Instinctively, he knew it was forty below
The wood stove barely took off the chill
He was so tired his actions were slow
Braving the cold, he fed his hungry dogs
Then for himself made a very meager meal
A cup of coffee helped to warm him up
It was so cold his feet he couldn’t feel
Then an idea formed in his exhausted mind
And outside to his bedded down dogs, he went
Old Joe, Sam, and Little Susie he got
Took them inside where the night they spent
Wrapped up in his blankets, dogs by his side
To some, it would be a bizarre sight
But on a snowy, windy, forty below eve
To survive, it had to be a three-dog night!